Elements of Journalism: Journalism Of Verification

The essence of journalism is a discipline of verification. That is, journalism isn't about writing; it's about getting it right, and having a system in place to fact-test information as we discover it.

Verification is what separates journalism from other forms of communication. Entertainment focuses on what is most diverting. Propaganda selects or invents facts to persuade and manipulate. Fiction invents scenarios. Art is based on creating and expressing impressions. Journalism is focused on getting what happened down right.

The meaning of objectivity has been lost. Originally, it was an appeal for journalists to develop a consistent method of testing information, like the reliance on functional truth that we discussed earlier, so that the personal and cultural biases of reporters would not undermine the accuracy of work.

Objectivity is a device to persuade the audience of one's accuracy and fairness. And journalism and science come from the same intellectual roots. In the same way a scientist comes up with a theory and then runs experiments to prove or disprove the theory, a journalist starts out with a presumption, and then find facts (via documents, witness statements, ect.) to find what is rooted in fact, and what is not.

The "science of reporting" is known as the Objective Method. There are several key points to the method. First, never add anything that wasn't there. Don't invent things, rearrange events in time or place or modify or combine people or events. Your writing can arrange events based on news value, but be sure to make it clear that it's out of sequence.

Second, never deceive the audience. Fooling people is a form of lying and it mocks the idea that journalism is committed to truthfulness. If you vary from the most literal form of eyewitness reporting, let your audience know or don't do it.

Third, be as transparent as possible about your methods and motives. Be as open and honest with audiences about what you know and what you don't. Acknowledge obvious questions your stories are not answering. Ask yourself, what does the reader need to know to evaluate this information for themselves? Also ask yourself, is there anything in your treatment of a story that requires explanation of why you did something of left something out?

Doing so shows respect for your audience. It also helps establish credibility through the expressed public interest motive.

Fourth, clearly identify sources -- both individuals and documents -- and explain any anonymous sourcing.

The problem with the science of reporting is, there is no single standard for verification. Doctors and scientists have rigorous standards based on natural law. For example, if you're doing an experiment on freezing water, water will freeze at 32 degrees, no matter what.

But media, by nature, is more subjective and interpretive. For example, how much proof is enough proof? It's situational and argumentative.

Society as a whole may not agree on a single truth. Think of the abortion debate: different groups have different truths. If you're pro-abortion, it's a right enshrined in law. If you're anti-abortion, it's sanctioned murder. In such instances, the public sphere becomes one of argument, and not agreement on what is truth.

Fairness and balance can also be interpreted differently. So instead of striving to define such terms, it's better to use techniques to help guide journalists in developing and verifying their work. As we noted earlier, balance can lead to distortion.

So, fairness should mean you are being fair to the facts and the audience's understanding of the facts, and not to a particular source  or that your story is balanced in a distorted way. When you try to determine accuracy based on fact-testing, that is journalism. If all you're doing is getting one side and then the other, then you're simply enabling an argument.

Elements of Journalism: Independence From Faction

Journalists must maintain an independence from those they cover. That manifests itself in several ways.

First, you must have an independence of mind. That means avoiding conflicts of interest; defined loosely as the avoidance of connections, benefits, and relationships that may draw into question your intentions.

For example, if you're on the football team, it would be a conflict of interest to write about the football team. If you're dating the mayor, you probably shouldn't be writing about local politics. If you're writing about an anti-war protest, don't participate in or donate to anti-war groups.

This applies to opinion writers as well! Their loyalty is to accuracy and the facts, even if seen from a partisan point of view. They are true to a set of ideas -- like conservatism -- rather than a member of a team -- the Republican Party -- and puts the audience first.

Second, you must have independence from class or economic status. There is a class divide between those who produce news, and those who receive it. It's become more pronounced since journalism has become more professional.

Solutions include recruiting more people from a diversity of classes and backgrounds and interests, so that newsrooms aren't so insular (e.g., the same kinds of people with the same parochial patterns).

Third, you must have an independence from race, ethnicity, religion and gender. Newsrooms lacking diversity are unable to do their jobs properly, and may not be able to appreciate, understand or learn of all the audiences they report to.

For example, a few years back The State News was very slow to pick up on anger among black students here over the Jena Six incident. At the same time, the newsroom was overwhelmingly white and suburban in their roots. The disconnect and newsroom composition were probably not a coincidence.

Diversity does NOT compromise independence. The key is whether editors and reporters maintain their primary allegiance to the core journalistic values that build toward truthfulness and informing the public. In that case, racial and ethnic and class and religious and ideological backgrounds inform their work without dictating it.

The end result is a richer, fuller view of the world for the public. Creating barriers to diversity and the related process of discovery is disloyal to your audience, by narrowing the newsroom's world view. Good judgment and first allegiance to the audience is what separates the journalist from the partisan.  

Elements of Journalism: Monitor Power

Journalists must serve as an independent monitor of power. It's the "watchdog" principle; that we watch over the powerful few in society on behalf of the many to guard against tyranny.

That extends to all powerful institutions in society: government, big business, and in the case of The State News, MSU administrators. It also extends to those in the shadows of society: the poor, everyday Joes, and in the case of The State News, everyday students.

That extends to making known and understood the effects of power. We need to recognize and share with our audience when powerful institutions/people are not working effectively (MSU screws up its budget, tuition goes up 100 percent next year). We also need to recognize when powerful institutions/people are working effectively (MSU finds gold in the Red Cedar River, free tuition for everybody!).

The watchdog principle is executed most notably through investigative reporting. And there are three basic types.

First, there is original investigative reporting. That's when reporters themselves uncover and document activities that have been previously unknown to the public, like when The Detroit Free Press got a hold of text messages between that city's then-mayor and one of his officials, indicating that they'd lied during a past court matter. That connection was completely unknown to the public and even the government (expect for the mayor and his aide) up to that point.

Second, there is interpretive investigative reporting. That's when careful thought and analysis of an idea and new reporting brings together information in a new, more complete context that provides deeper public understanding. Like The State News did in the summer of 2012, when they ran a three-part series looking at how the combination of escalating tuition and shrinking financial aid was leaving MSU students in a bind. Each individual factor was evident, but the series put it all together to emphasize meaning and effect on everyday students.

Third, there is reporting on investigations, where reporting develops from the discovery of a leak of information from an official investigation already underway or in preparation by others, usually the government or police agencies. For example, often the reports of an athlete using performance-enhancing drugs are sources from police leaks or the obtaining of drug tests results from a drug-testing agency.

Most investigations use some of all three forms.

There are risks to investigative reporting. First, the reporter is granting the interview subject a powerful forum in which to air an allegation without public accountability, especially if the subject is granted anonymity in exchange for the information.

So, a reporter must be on alert over being used. Also, we must use due diligence to ensure the report is in the interest of the audience, and not just a source or sources. Is this something the public wants or needs to know? Does the presentation and the angles that are being emphasized highlight those public interests?

Also, double-check what you are being told by sources. Make sure there is enough evidence independent of the source's statements to support and justify your report.

Elements of Journalism: Engagement And Relevance

Journalists must make significant news interesting and relevant. First, we must consider the differences between storytelling versus information. Storytelling is the art of expression, such as a bedtime story you tell your niece. Information is raw data, such as a sports score.

Journalism is a combination of storytelling and information. The two are not contradictory. Journalism is storytelling with a purpose, and rooted in fact. Our duty is not just to provide information, but to do so in a way people will listen while still adhering to accuracy and truth.

There are various approaches to making important news interesting. Those approaches start with asking yourselves questions, like:

Who is the audience and what do they need to know? What is a given story really about? Let's say you're working for The State News, and you're covering student government. They pass some sort of big budget increase and as part of that budget increase, student fees will go up.What's the main gist of the story, the budget or the fee hike? Which would readers -- in this case, primarily MSU students -- care about most? Which would affect them most directly?

It would be the fee hike, right? So that should be the angle you highlight in how you write the story.

Who is the audience and what to they need to know to make up their own minds about this subject? For example, The State News regularly covers East Lansing City Council meetings. Rather than cover whatever the council considers their biggest actions, reporters look for and concentrate on stories that have the greatest impact or interest to their primary audience -- MSU students -- regardless of how big a part of the meeting those issues were. We're not there to take dictation of the meeting; we're there to highlight what matters most to our audience.

Who has the information? Go to the people most directly involved with the subject matters.

What's the best way to tell this story? For example, on a story about a tuition increase, perhaps you'd want to focus on how the tuition increase will affect the average student by talking to students and asking them how they'll handle the tuition hike.

There are various story styles one can utilize. We'll look at each approach, using examples based on coverage of one of the every-few-years Cedar Fest riots around here.

Elements of Journalism: Making News Comprehensive And Proportional

Journalists should keep the news comprehensive and in proportion. Think of journalism as cartography (the science of mapping). Journalism creates a map for its audience to navigate society (e.g., how much is tuition going up? When is the football game? Is it a good idea to plan another Cedar Fest?). That is its reason for being.

And the value of journalism, like a map, depends on completeness and proportionality; accuracy and the ability to see the whole community in coverage. Otherwise, it's like a map with whole parts of town missing. It leaves the audience poorly informed because so much was left out, and vulnerable to making poor decisions about their needs and societal trends based on what they don't know.

This is why we need to show people not just what they want to know, but also what they need to know and what they don't know.

It's also important to have the ability to see yourself and every-day people in your coverage (that is, your needs, values, interests and that of the community at large reflected by the types of stories presented and issues tackled), and a fair mix of what most people in your community would consider interesting, significant, relevant and/or useful.

In judging the wants and needs of an audience, traditional market research does not work very well, like focus groups and surveys. Usually, those ask people to choose between predictable alternatives, like different brands of a certain product. News is harder to market-research because it changes every day.

And news may not be significant until you know about it. For example, personal safety may not be on your radar as a reader. Unless, that is, The State News has a story about muggings on campus. The news creates interest that wasn't previously there.

Journalism requires a more open-ended approach. Simply pay attention to your community and its people. Find out more about their lives. Ask about and look for broad trends. Focus on everyday people and their problems, and not big-wigs and theirs.

Try to understand how to design a news package that is comprehensive and proportional to their community, their needs and their concerns by asking yourself questions like;

What are people talking about? For example, at MSU they may be talking about how high their student loan debt will go, or whether they will have jobs after graduation.

What are they complaining about? Like tuition hikes and off-campus rent getting more expensive.

What are they doing? Like, working multiple jobs while in school, or getting out of Michigan after graduation.

Getting answers allow newspapers to design coverage that responds directly to your audience. And such coverage rings authentic with readers (because they are seeing issues being addressed that actually appear in their daily lives), who then build trust in you.

Elements of Journalism: Responsibility To Conscience

There are no laws, regulations, licensing or formal self-policing of journalists. All that is prohibited by the First Amendment. So, where does responsibility lay? With each news organization, and the ethics and judgment of individual reporters and editors.

Why is self-policing important? Because a news organization's relevance in a community is based on whether readers trust the authority,honesty or judgment of the journalists who produce it. After all, the audience is free to choose other media, or none at all.

So, everyone in a news organization must have a personal sense of ethics and responsibility, and an obligation to exercise their conscience. We have an obligation to challenge superiors, advertisers, and the audience if fairness and accuracy require that.

(But know the difference between an act of journalistic malfeasance and a journalistic disagreement! You need to find a way to fight the former, but if there's no ethical concern and it's simply a fight over two ethical ways of doing something, then don't push back and do your job as asked.)

This is another reason intellectual diversity is important to a newsroom. The advantages of cultural diversity are stifled if people from different backgrounds adhere to a single mentality. A newsroom needs to be open and honest so that diversity can function journalistically.

Problem is, there are real-world pressures against individual conscience. Like human nature. In hiring and promotions, editors may select people in their own image, and not take risks on people outside the mainstream.

Plus, there is bureaucratic inertia, in which an environment exists where it is preferable to do what is routine and expected as opposed to what is right and necessary. And there is putting process over product; e.g., running a story simply to fill space, rather than the story having any merits of its own.

Conformity is a risk, in that it's easier to just get along with the mainstream. And unfortunately, there is sometimes the risk of "influence-peddling," where stories are pushed or killed by editors to support a special interest. This is bad journalism.

So, what are we supposed to do? Unfortunately, there are no easy and obvious answers. Doing the right thing is great, but you still have rent to pay and you need your job. Still, it's up to you to find a way to do the right thing. Each reporter is a steward of good journalism. It's up to us.

JRN 200: Welcome To The Fall 2014 Class! (Interwebz Version)

Seriously, welcome. I'm glad to have you here. Let's talk about this class in greater detail.

First, a little about me. You can just call me Omar, since (as you can see from the syllabus) my last name is a mess. I've been the adviser at The State News for the past seven years, and teaching JRN 200 for the past six. Before that, I was a professional journalist for 17 years, most recently in Las Vegas, and I've covered everything from car crashes to Hurricane Katrina.

And in those 17 years I learned a lot, namely this: in journalism we learn by doing. That is, we report and write, then we review what we did well and what we could have done better, then we put those lessons in practice the next time around. Each day in those 17 years I got better, some days more than others. You don't learn journalism passively.

To that end, during this semester we will have many writing assignments called practice stories. In these assignments, we will work on a particular area of news writing (which will always be preceded by a text reading assignment and an online lecture or lecture summary) by giving you a set of facts, and then asking you to write a story based on those facts (using the techniques mentioned in our readings and lectures).

Then, we will learn from those practice stories in two ways: first, you will get a personal evaluation of your individual work, where I will go over key points, both good and bad. Second, we will look at prime examples of each others' work via the blog (with names stripped out to protect the innocent), where you will benefit two ways: first, by seeing how your peers handled the exact same assignment; and second, by the blog highlighting good techniques and common mistakes and ways to avoid such errors.

Because we do learn by doing, practice stories will be weighed relatively minimally as to your final course grade. And that's by design. We want you to have the opportunity to make mistakes without seeing a serious dent to your final grade. So if you feel you didn't do well in a few practice stories, don't fret.

What we're building up to will be out-of-class stories, which will be a big part of your final grade. But the goal is to use the practice stories to build good habits and identify and weed out bad ones, so that by the time we get to out-of-class stories you are in a position to kick ass.

With all these writing assignments, we are going to be strict in two particular ways. First, ANY factual error -- even just one misspelled name or incorrect number! -- will automatically result in an assignment grade of 1.0, no matter how well you otherwise did the work.

That's not an arbitrary thing because I'm an asshole. Rather, it's to emphasize an important point: journalism isn't about writing, it's about getting it right. We write in journalism not for personal expression, but to share information that is relevant, interesting and/or useful to your audience. And if the purpose is to share information, it must be accurate. Wrong info is hardly interesting, relevant or useful to anyone.

Also, errors can be dangerous to your career. When I was working in Vegas, my paper had a five-error-per-year rule. After the first error, you'd get a verbal reprimand. The second one got you a letter in your file. After the third, you had to outline a corrective plan of action. The fourth got you an unpaid suspension. And the fifth got you fired. And this was while I was writing over 200 stories a year! Gulp.

I'm not saying this to scare you; rather, it is to motivate you to have good fact-checking habits in place so it never gets that drastic. (I was never fired during my professional career and I'm not a genius, so I know it can be done, and done easily), and to impress upon you that truth is the cornerstone of what we do.

Odds are you're going to have a few "fatals" (as we call 'em) in your practice story. That's okay; virtually everyone who has taken my JRN 200 class has had multiple fatals, especially in the first half of the semester when everything is new and good habits are still being built. Don't be scared of 'em and don't fret; just learn how you can do a better job of fact-checking, and become aware of some common traps that lead people into fatals.

Second, we are going to enforce deadlines to the second. So, let's say an assignment is due at 9 a.m. sharp, and it's time-stamped on my email as having been received at 9 a.m. and four seconds. I will unmercifully grade that assignment as late, and late assignments automatically get a 0.0.

Again, I'm not doing that to be an ass. There's a journalistic reason for that. And that this is a deadline business in which we can NEVER miss a deadline. Ever. If you're writing a script for the 11 p.m. news, the scripts have to be in before 11 p.m., each and every time. After all, you've never flipped on the news and hard the anchor say, "Welcome to the 11 o'clock news. Just give us a minute and we'll get back to you." It's because people who blow deadlines are immediately exiled, so we have to start building a habit of never missing deadlines.

I'd rather have you learn that lesson here than during your first (or would it be, last?) job.

Okay, I know all of this can sound intimidating. And I can't promise that you won't have frustrations, especially early on. But these things I can guarantee you: first, YOU CAN DO THIS! I'm not asking you to lift a two-ton truck over your head; I'm asking you to master skills that have been mastered before. And I know you can master them because you are a student at a Big Ten school. That tells me all I need to know about whether you have the talent. You do.

But that doesn't mean that you'll come out firing on all cylinders on the first day. Starting something new is hard, even when it's something you have the talent in which to shine. I mean, the first time Michael Phelps ever went swimming, he probably needed floaties and such. It didn't mean he wouldn't eventually become the greatest swimmer of all time. It just meant that he had to learn how to bring his skills out. That's what we'll do here, too.

Second, I AM NOT ASKING YOU TO DO THIS ALONE! I'm here to help. I'll offer you tricks and techniques on how to avoid fatals and get assignments in on time and structure your stories properly and do kick-ass reporting. We're in this together, and I've shepherded plenty of people through this class before. I know we can do this.

So if you have a day that's frustrating, don't get frustrated. Don't punch a wall or drop the class. Just learn the lessons on how to do better the next time, and then do just that.

Again, that's how we learn in journalism. And that's how we'll learn this semester. Just stick with it, and I'll be there for you.